Re: [Critical-Realism] How can a de-ont exist or anabsence bepresent?

["Dave Taylor" <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Nick

>First off, my apologies for the inattentive responses to Howard's post ...

Your own contributions are nevertheless worth their length. I apologise if
my attempts at brevity should ever appear brusque. Here, perhaps you did not
notice my immediate response to Howard?

>>I beg to differ.  We indirectly refer to a state of mind [i.e. brain]
which enables us to recognise an absense. ...

My apologies for not following this up before being diverted by the
significant connection between need and duty.  What is happening in the case
of 'phlogiston' (a theory of waste products as a new phase of matter
different from "earth, water,air and fire") is readily examined by reference
to the linguistic equivalent of Bhaskar's "deep" level of reality, the MODE
of interpretation structures introduced in Algol68.

'Phlogiston' refers to an attempt to attempt to interpret PRE-EXISTING
phenomena (products of combustion) as an entity, using a referentially
detached MODE of interpretation (this entity is something "given off" by
fire). The non-existence of this entity has been inferred from failures of
SUBSEQUENT attempts to interpret the phenomena in this way (some combustion
residues have increased rather than decreased in weight).  A computer model
of this would be roughly as follows:

First the MODE PHLOGISTON is defined, then data entities of mode PHLOGISTON.
These are initially unset: so far as the computer is concerned, it has not
yet encountered any phlogiston.  Next an attempt is made to "read" data on
the supposition that it stands for phlogiston.  The error correction logic
will at this point reject some of the data as indicating increased rather
than the expected decreased weight.  The corresponding entities will thus
remain unset.  A test of whether ALL the PHLOGISTON entities are set will
fail, showing the theory of Phlogiston to be false.  This breaks the
putative causal link: the computer is not allowed to to act on (i.e.
transform or reproduce) the data so invalidated.

Howard may not be interested in what people think, but seemingly, the
non-existence of phlogiston was only accepted when an alternative
explanation in terms of chemical elements was found for all the phenomena.

   
Dave
  
   

-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Nick
Hostettler
Sent: 07 December 2007 22:57
To: critical-realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] How can a de-ont exist or anabsence
bepresent?

Dear Howard, Louis and Mervyn, 

First off, my apologies for the inattentive responses to Howard's post, and
my thanks to Louis and to Mervyn for clarifying the central issues.
Apologies too for getting carried away: the post is a long one. 

Howard asked about "the causal efficacy of phlogiston," emphasising that his
question was not about "what someone thought or thinks about phlogiston, but
of the de-ont?"

Mervyn's initial contribution was to lay out the point about different
classes of de-onts and I hoped to develop this line of thinking with my
comments on classes of possibility. From the perspective of ontological
polyvalence, this kind of de-ont has no causal significance whatsoever.
Howard was quite right to say that: "The point generalizes. An absence,
absence of being, means an absence of causal structure and hence of causal
efficacy." Absolutely! Phlogiston is an absolute non-entity and entirely
non-causal. 

After the agreement comes the inevitable 'however'. 

Howard indicates a shift in gear, or at least an ambiguity, when he says
"What a drought causes is a result of the causal structures in place, not of
absent non-structures that aren't there." If we take "absent non-structures"
to mean that member of the class of impossible beings, i.e. absolute
non-entities, can have no causal role in the playing out of a drought then
there can be no disagreement. But this is by no means the only way this
could be read. At least, we can read into it the possibility of referring to
the other classes of de-onts: as yet unrealised possibilities and past
presences. So, when Howard asks "How can a de-ont exist or an absence be
present?" it is worthwhile trying to give a useful response, one that
disagrees with the idea that "When we speak of the presence of an absence,
there is actually no causal structure to which we refer." A polyvalent
response to this insists on the co-presence of absences and presences and
argues that the former are, or least can be, integral to any real causal
powers. 

So, this is what appears to be at stake: a polyvalent account of being and
then a similar account of causality. 

I don't have a good feel for the extent to which this is contentious, but
the reality of absence does not seem to be too much of a problem: not only
is reality irreducible to what it is possible to experience through our
senses (ontological depth), it is also irreducible to what is here and now.
Reality also encompasses all that has been (the past) and all that will be
(the future). From the limited perspective of any here and now the past (to
the extent it is no longer present) and the future (to the extent it is not
already being realised) are absences. Also, another dimension of the here
and the now we cannot experience is all the possibilities embedded and
embodied in it. These are real, whether or not they are ever realised. 

In sum, to say that something is absent from the here and now is just to say
that it is at a distance in terms of time and/or space. Absenting, on the
other hand, means that that distance is changing, i.e. something is further
off in time, space, or less of a possibility) or, in the case of absenting
the absence, that distance is diminishing. 

So, reality is essentially polyvalent: it is always-already constituted by a
given ensemble of presences and absences. What is more, that ensemble is
always-already changing: polyvalent configurations are always being
reconfigured. 

Roy's dialectic, though, has several aspects, with absence being only one.
Before we can look at what kind of case might be made for the causal
significance of the relevant classes of absence we should take some other
ideas into consideration. Two such worth mentioning are the unity of space,
time and causality and entity relationism. 

Space, time and causality are necessary ontological relations within and
between all aspects of our universe; their unity binds being together into
causal processes, tensed rhythmics. Entity relationism is closely related to
this. The old philosophical problem of the boat whose parts are so
completely changed over time raises a question about the identity of the
boat. If none of the wood from which it was originally constructed is
present any longer, then can it be said that we still have the same boat? Do
we not now have a different one? Critical realism offers one kind of answer
to this in terms of the persistence of the structure over time. Whatever
pieces are used to repair the boat, the structure remains the same: the boat
retains its capacities. Identity is shifted from the particular material out
of which the boat is built to the way in which that material is organised.
However, this has the unfortunate consequence of formalising identity. The
dialectical critical realist response to this question is to embed the boat
into the social relations which have produced and reproduced it. This shift
in perspective means that the identity of the ship is now to be understood
as changing over time and it has been considerably expanded to encompass its
integration into its social milieu. That is, this particular boat is
spatially, temporally and causally integrated into geo-history, and its real
identity as a particular entity is inseparable from that history. Identity
encompasses the many dimensions of absence: the past, the outside and the
possibilities that might unfold in the future.  

This has important ramifications for the discussion of absence and
causality: the real identity of any entity now encompasses external as well
as internal relations and it encompasses past, present and future changes to
both kinds of relation. It is in this context that it can make sense to
speak of the polyvalence of causality, thereby including absences as
co-constitutive of real change. 

So, coming back to the question about the effects of a drought: what effects
does a drought have, and how? The plants that survive in a given place do so
because their essential needs are being met: they get the water they need to
enable them to sustain their own existence. That water, then, is integral to
what those plants are, both in terms of their external relations to a water
supply and their internal metabolising of the water. Water is integral to
the structures and capacities the plants have, and we could not speak of
those structures or mechanisms without reference to it: there is no actual
structure of the plant that can be abstracted from the water. The drought
means that the external relations of these plants are changed. The breaking
of this relation to nourishment, the absence of water, puts them in danger
of perishing. This change means the plants lose something essential to what
they are. They become incomplete and failing plants, unable to function and
facing the prospect of eventual death. 

These notional plants, then, must be understood as being bound into their
environment such that their identities as living beings encompass their
on-going relations to it. The drought changes those relations, causing
external and internal absences: it generates absences which are essential
components of the causal processes which bring about the death of the
plants. So, Howard is right again to way that the existing causal structures
of the plants are essential to what happens next, but so too is the absence
of the water from them. 

In the end, though, would it be too crude to say that the drought, the
absence of water, kills the plants? Would it really be a mistake to say that
a relation of absence, i.e. lack in the face of need, is causally
efficacious? 

Nick. 


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